bear-ly anywhere yet.

oh sweet morning.

let me tell you, there is something about waking up in a hotel that makes you really appreciate your own bed.  that lumpy, stained, tired mattress that you complain about throughout the year suddenly seems like a dream cloud when you've spent a couple of nights away from it.

just sayin'.

my kids are snuggled up in a bed together, one watching hotel tv and the other playing his itouch. they got less than 8 hours of sleep last night, thanks to a tremendous clusterfuck of chaos brought on by hotwire and the sacramento crowne plaza hotel.  when we finally settled in to our second hotel of the night (thank you la quinta inn), it was way past 11:30 and we were all so tired it was laughable.  literally.  all we could do was laugh.  but let me start at the beginning...

two days ago we started our trip and headed up to kings canyon/sequoia national park, and saw some of the most amazing trees on our planet.  we stayed in a tiny cabin with signs posted inside telling us to lock up all of our food, on account of the bears.  we did all we could to summon bears to us throughout the day we were there, but no luck, even when there were prominent "bear crossing" signs, which i now consider to be false advertising.

at one point, my jaded, cranky ten year old son said excitedly, "i just love nature!"  and he wasn't being sarcastic.  he really meant it.  he had stars in his eyes when he said it.

i'm gonna ride on that one remark for a long, long time.

we had terrible food, just terrible, terrible food; i finally cracked open a barely ripened avocado and tried to scrape bits off with a tortilla chip in desperation.  the kids even remarked about the quality of the food served within the park, which, if you know my kids, isn't really unusual.  we drove the windy, twisting roads throughout the park, took a kick-ass tour of the crystal cave there, and got stuck behind lines and lines of cars as we all waited for the nice construction lady with the stop sign to let us all pass on a one-lane road.

then, as we journeyed to the last destination in the park--seeing the general sherman tree, which is the tallest tree in the world--we got stuck behind a line of cars again, and getting out of ours we walked ahead and saw that one of the sequoias had uprooted itself and was lying across the road, blocking two lanes of traffic.  in a moment of true human folly, we all tried to move it together, then began picking pieces of the bark off, in hopes of pulling it apart to make way for all of us to get by.  after a few minutes of this, we all gave up, and my family turned our car around and made our way out of the park without the satisfaction of having seen the famous tree but knowing that mother nature made her mark on us anyway.

our plan was to get to reno last night, stay at some swank kid-friendly hotel with a cool pool and hang out a bit.  but time got away with itself, and we decided that sacramento was a better choice.  so we hotwired a hotel and made our way up there, stopping only at the fresno whole foods for some dinner.

this story is sounding really boring to relate to you.  but last night it was ridiculously exciting, in the worst way possible.

we finally arrived at the crowne plaza around 10:30.  i waited in line for 20 minutes to check in, while selkie ran around the lobby like a girl on drugs, which she was, sort of, since she'd had a soda with dinner.  the woman at the counter was by herself and frazzled but nice, and she got us all set up with a room.  we took out all of our gear, of which there is a lot, and made our way up the stairs to our room where ONE KING BED awaited us.

fuck. fuck. fuck.  (those were the exact words i uttered.)

i called the desk lady who said there were no rooms with double beds, and when i reminded her that we had just had a lovely conversation about me traveling with my two children and husband cross-country and how could she check us into a room with one bed thinking that would suffice she had no answer.  even mentioned that there were no roll-aways available.

cut to us calling la quinta inn, kids crying from exhaustion, me on the phone with hotwire getting our money back, finally arriving to the other hotel where we walk in with exhausted children to our new room which reeks of pot.  "someone was smoking in here!!" said milo.

yup.

now its today, and the kids and alex are in the pool and i'm having a few minutes to myself.  i am determined that we are going to get into idaho tonight if it kills us, as being only six hours from home seems so wrong, given all the driving we've been doing.

anyway.  this concludes this morning's update from the road.